Golden Entertainment Q1 2025 Earnings Report

Golden Entertainment EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $0.09
• Consensus EPS: $0.10
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -$0.01
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Golden Entertainment Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $160.84 million
• Expected Revenue: $164.37 million
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -$3.53 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Golden Entertainment Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q1 2025
• Date: 5/8/2025
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, May 8, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 5:00PM ET

Golden Entertainment (NASDAQ:GDEN) owns and operates a diversified entertainment platform in the United States. The company operates through four segments; Nevada Casino Resorts, Nevada Locals Casinos, Nevada Taverns, and Distributed Gaming. It also operates casino, casino resorts, and taverns; and slot machines in third party non-casino locations. The company was incorporated in 1998 and is headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Golden Entertainment Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Our Q1 results were in line with expectations aside from a $3M EBITDA headwind at The Strat due to last year’s Super Bowl, while other casinos delivered year-over-year EBITDA growth and Q2 is off to a strong start.
• The Strat’s occupancy is up 6% year-over-year for May and rates are improving, with an OTA mix of ~65% trending down toward our 50% target and strong citywide event pacing into June.
• In Laughlin and our Nevada locals segment, EBITDA rose by focusing on cost reductions and profitable entertainment, with locals casinos achieving a 46% EBITDA margin for the second consecutive quarter.
• Although tavern revenue and EBITDA dipped slightly year-over-year, sequential EBITDA improved from Q4 thanks to better performance in new taverns and disciplined expense management amid unsustainable promotional activity by small operators.
• We ended Q1 with $400M debt, 2.4x net leverage and $225M revolver availability, have repurchased ~3.2M shares (~$100M) and paid $35M in dividends, and will prioritize opportunistic share buybacks over M&A given our dislocated valuation.

Presentation

[Operator]

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Golden Entertainment First Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Conference Call. Please note that this call is being recorded today. Now I'd like to turn the conference over to James Adams, the company's Vice President of Corporate Finance and Treasurer.

[Operator]

Please go ahead, sir.

[James Adams, VP - Corporate Finance & Treasurer at Golden Entertainment]

Thank you very much, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. On the call today is Blake Sartini, the company's Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Charles Purtell, the company's President and Chief Financial Officer. On this call, we will make forward looking statements under the Safe Harbor provisions of the federal securities laws. Actual results may differ materially from those contemplated in these statements. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or otherwise.

[James Adams, VP - Corporate Finance & Treasurer at Golden Entertainment]

During the call, we will also discuss non GAAP financial measures when talking about our performance. You can find the reconciliation of GAAP financial measures in our press release, which is available on our website. We will start the call with Charles reviewing the details of the first quarter results and a business update. Following that, Blake and Charles will take your questions. With that, I'll turn the call over to Charles.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

Thanks, James. Our first quarter year over year results were in line with our expectations and primarily impacted by not having last year's Super Bowl in Las Vegas, which was mainly felt at The Strat. Outside of the Super Bowl impact on The Strat, our business in Q1 was healthy with EBITDA from our other casinos up year over year and EBITDA from our tavern stabilizing. As we look forward, April continues to demonstrate stable operating trends and May is off to a strong start. Currently, we are not seeing the dislocation in our business that seems to be reflected in our public valuation.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

Now for some context on our property performance in the first quarter. The Strand experienced declining occupancy and spend primarily in February, resulting in a $3,000,000 EBITDA headwind from last year's Super Bowl. Occupancy was down 5% for the quarter, but down 13% in February, which obviously led to lower gaming, F and B and other revenues for the property. However, in April, our hotel revenue is up on both higher occupancy and rate, which is driving improved EBITDA heading into Q2. Looking forward through May, Strat occupancy is pacing up 6% over last year at attractive rates and June is showing strength as well.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

Currently, Q2 is looking better than last year for the property, but without direct convention bookings at The Strat, we have limited visibility beyond the next few months. In Maughlin, we increased EBITDA by reducing expenses and focusing on more profitable concerts at our smaller entertainment venue. We also targeted weekend promotional activities for driving customers as well as continue to promote our midweek bingo for local guests, which allowed us to maintain our leading market share in Laughlin. For Nevada locals casinos, our revenue was flat to prior year with EBITDA up 2% largely driven by operational efficiencies across payroll and other expenses. We see consistent performance out of our Locals casinos with EBITDA margins at 46% for the second straight quarter.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

We actually see increasing strength in our Locals business in April, So this segment is off to a strong start in Q2. In our taverns, revenue and EBITDA were down slightly year over year, but on a sequential basis, EBITDA continued to increase over Q4 as we achieved improved performance from our newest taverns and lowered operating expenses. We have seen an uptick in promotional activity in the tavern market from smaller private operators, which we do not view as sustainable, but it may have some impact on Q2 performance for our taverns as we maintain a more disciplined reinvestment strategy. Moving on to our capital structure, we ended the quarter with just over $400,000,000 of debt outstanding, dollars 50,000,000 of cash and $225,000,000 of remaining availability under our revolving credit facility. Our low net leverage at 2.4 times EBITDA and liquidity profile will enable us to withstand any potential impact to our business from the macro environment and allow us to continue to reinvest in our own assets, pay dividends and opportunistically acquire more of our own stock.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

In Q1, we had a short open window to buy stock, but still use $7,600,000 of our buyback authorization to repurchase 274,000 shares. Since the start of 2024, we have repurchased 3,200,000.0 shares totaling almost $100,000,000 and paid out $35,000,000 in dividends. We have $92,000,000 remaining on our current buyback authorization, which we will use opportunistically throughout the year. We have evaluated the limited M and A opportunities currently in the market. And given the dislocation in our share price, there is no better use for our capital than repurchasing our own equity at these levels.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

Our business has remained resilient and is improving despite an uncertain macroeconomic environment. Having a focused portfolio of branded taverns, casinos with own real estate and low leverage positions us well to withstand any potential short term fluctuations in consumer demand and to benefit from the favorable long term economic trends in Nevada. That concludes our prepared remarks. Blake and I are now available for questions.

[Operator]

We will now begin the question and answer session. And your first question comes from the line of Barry Jonas with Truist Securities. Barry, please go ahead.

[Barry Jonas, Managing Director at Truist Securities]

Hey, guys. I wanted to start Barry. Hey. Want to start with The Strat. Appreciate some of the comments in the opening remarks.

[Barry Jonas, Managing Director at Truist Securities]

Can you maybe just give a little color now about what the booking window is, how it's been trending as of late? And also maybe talk about what your OTA mix is now and how you're sort of moving towards that targeted 50% mix?

[Blake Sartini, Chairman & CEO at Golden Entertainment]

Yes. So as Charles mentioned in his prepared comments, we don't have much business without our traditional banquet space, our window is probably much shorter than others. For April, May, it looks very, very good. It looks very strong, pacing on a trending basis better than Q1. It's hard for us to predict really outside of June.

[Blake Sartini, Chairman & CEO at Golden Entertainment]

I think Charles mentioned June was looking strong also. But we are seeing I think in addition, I think it's important to point out, we're seeing casino revenues and operational margins also trend in the right direction at The Strat. So overall, the property is trending well. And outside of the next ninety days, it's hard for us really to provide any solid guidance.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

Yes. And I'd also just add to that. I mean, than others, you know, because as Blake said, don't have that group space, our booking window has always been relatively short compared to some of our peers. So we'll typically see 25% to 30% of the occupancy materialize within a seven day period. And that's been fairly consistent for us.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

So we haven't seen a lot of change in terms of the shortening booking window from our perspective. But again, we've always been shorter than others.

[Blake Sartini, Chairman & CEO at Golden Entertainment]

On the OT on your second part of the question on the OTA percentage, I think we're running approximately 65% now, and trending downward as well. We are doing a much better job through our casino marketing programs on direct bookings and producing a lot more personal information for people checking in, putting systems in place that allow us to speak with them directly, which had been a bit spotty in the past. So we are trending at 65%, give or take, right now, in the right direction. We're very bullish on us being able to get to that 50% level.

[Barry Jonas, Managing Director at Truist Securities]

Got it. And then if I could sneak one more in. I think as well the comments about share repurchases, taking priority in the current environment makes a lot of sense. But can you maybe expand more on the M and A environment both on the buy side as well as sell side of what you've discussed before? Just curious how much the macro is impacting those discussions or opportunities.

[Barry Jonas, Managing Director at Truist Securities]

Thanks.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

Well, I think Yeah. I think the short answer is quite a bit. I mean, when you have this much value dislocation in a short period of time, you are resetting expectations and you're uncertain about what the future looks like. So that obviously puts a damper on just strategic M and A discussions. And from a financing perspective, think certainly us and others headed into this year anticipating interest rates to be lower than where they are at this point in time.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

So we'll see how that plays out over the course of the year. But that obviously has a direct impact on the ability to pay and ability to finance transactions.

[Barry Jonas, Managing Director at Truist Securities]

Makes sense. All right. Thank you so much.

[Blake Sartini, Chairman & CEO at Golden Entertainment]

Thanks.

[Operator]

And your next question comes from the line of David Katz with Jefferies. David, please go ahead.

[David Katz, Managing Director at Jefferies]

Thank you. Good evening, everybody. Charles, I wanted to go back to your commentary about the Tavern business and smaller operators. You know, by definition, you know, a smaller operator or two, you know, shouldn't make that much of a difference. So there must be, I'm I'm guessing, you know, more of a trend among the smaller guys.

[David Katz, Managing Director at Jefferies]

And is it true, you know, then, you know, that other larger operators are not participating in the competition? A a little more, you know, meat on that would be helpful.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

Yeah. I mean, keep it we're the largest operator of caverns in Nevada. Most of that is in Southern Nevada in Las Vegas. If you think about restricted licenses that we operate, there's probably around 400 or so in Southern Nevada. And again, we're the largest, but we're a smaller portion of that.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

So what we see, and we've lost some visibility on this once we divested the route that serviced these locations, and we see an increased promotional activity, not so much necessarily at chain store locations, but on competing bar type locations from private operators. And what we've seen in the past over many years is in that mode, are really just chasing more dollars over the same you know, customer wallet. And so, yeah, I think that we haven't seen that behavior in the casinos and in the local casinos. I think there's probably a little bit more sophistication there and a little bit more experience. I think the turnover in ownership with smaller private tavern operators is a lot more frequent than what you see in casinos, and it's a lot less institutionalized in terms of ownership and sophistication.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

So those are people chasing business. We've seen it before in the past. We think we're gonna stick with our strategy. And we've already by the way, we've seen that mitigate a bit as we get into, you know, April and May. But, you know, you you there's really no way for us to govern what other people aren't doing in the market as we were somewhat able to at least provide some guidance when we own the route to others on best practices for tavern marketing.

[Blake Sartini, Chairman & CEO at Golden Entertainment]

Yeah. I might just tell you, it's a good question. You're right. Typically, these smaller operators, one or two, would not impact our 72 or 73 chain franchise. I in the past, I have seen that these marketing trends are typically not sustainable even for the smaller guys.

[Blake Sartini, Chairman & CEO at Golden Entertainment]

To Charles' point, the the short term chase dollars. But back to Charles' prepared comments, with our disciplined approach, we're now three quarters in a row of trend of EBITDA trend upward. We've gotten our arms around, and I think we can get a little more detail if you're interested, on our newer taverns are now performing significantly better than our prior call. So we are confident our size and our disciplined approach will overcome these short term trends that some of these independent operators may trying but we know are not sustainable.

[David Katz, Managing Director at Jefferies]

Understood. And if I can just go a little further from your unique purview, you know, given that you have that Tavern business, is there anything we can point to or discuss with respect to how, you know, consumers are behaving and across the valley over the last, call it, sixty five days or so?

[Blake Sartini, Chairman & CEO at Golden Entertainment]

Yeah. I think as we define our taverns as hyper local, if you will, Our other than four zero one exposure, our demographic in the taverns really is not invested in the market, so to speak, from a broader perspective. They are more in tune with commodity prices, mortgage rates, wealth effect of equity in their homes. And so it's been, as I mentioned in past, the most resilient part of our business. In the last sixty five days and particularly since Liberation Day or when the turmoil began in the market, our most for the most part, our customers have seen right through that as they're not really exposed to the broader market.

[Blake Sartini, Chairman & CEO at Golden Entertainment]

We are seeing trends, as we mentioned in our our prior calls, of similar amounts of gaming days but less gaming investment, so to speak. So there has been a pullback a little bit in terms of people coming in as frequently, but maybe not spending as much. But generally speaking to your question, I don't believe the broader market has a long term impact on our Tavern customer.

[David Katz, Managing Director at Jefferies]

Perfect. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

And your next question comes from the line of Chad Beynon with Macquarie Group. Chad, please go ahead.

[Chad Beynon, Managing Director, Analyst at Macquarie Group]

Afternoon, Blake, Charles. Thanks for taking my question. Wanted to revisit the point, Charles, you were making about the M and A search and the decision to buy back stock. So just on that, I know you talked a lot about this last quarter and maybe even the quarter prior. But since you did a comprehensive search, is this something that you would maybe revisit throughout the year?

[Chad Beynon, Managing Director, Analyst at Macquarie Group]

Or are you just kind of keeping the lines open? What would what do you think would bring more portfolios or assets, to the market? Do you think it's fairly static right now or this is something that could change as we progress through the year? Thank you.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, Chad. Look, I think we're in a a wait and see type of moment for the market, particularly around m and a. I think if you look at assets that have been marketed recently, single assets, opcos, subscale single assets, or larger type of opcos.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

Those have been in the opportunities that have been presented in one way, in a shape, or form. I think, you know, this and with relatively high price expectations, in relation to the quality of those assets and the opportunities that they present. So when you put that at the backdrop against, you know, buying EBITDA for at wholly owned gaming assets that we know in markets that we like at seven times EBITDA or less, that obviously leads to we should just be buying our own business with excess capital. Does that change over time? You know, maybe, but I don't see that in the near term.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

I think there's still gonna be potential dislocation. And so, you know, we're we are a we've been a big buyer of our stock at prices that are higher than we're trading at right now. We're gonna be a buyer of our stock, yeah, at these levels. For a more larger scale m and a, I mean, again, I think you're gonna have to wait and see how see how things, you know, play out on the macro side. And within the sector, I still believe the sector should be consolidating.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

I think that opportunities may present themselves in the future that are attractive to us, a good fit for us, but there's nothing out there that's worth, in our mind, changing strategy from repurchasing our own stock as the focus, investing in our own assets, showing up the operations, and distributing capital to shareholders in the form of dividends.

[Chad Beynon, Managing Director, Analyst at Macquarie Group]

Okay. Thank you. That makes a lot of sense. And then back on the strat, I guess a two parter here. One, can you talk about exposure to Canada or any other market where we're seeing weakness in terms of inbound, inflamements?

[Chad Beynon, Managing Director, Analyst at Macquarie Group]

And then secondly, any update just in terms of how citywides and events at the Sphere, Allegion, etcetera, look beyond the period that you talked about, in your near term window? Thank you.

[Blake Sartini, Chairman & CEO at Golden Entertainment]

Yeah. Chad, in regards to Canada, Chad is really not exposed to a material amount of international business, primarily flying and driving Southern California, Arizona and so on. So we I would say it's immaterial to discuss what we would maybe feeling at The Strat from that perspective. Citywides, you know, the citywides seem to be booking pretty well. Obviously, as you know, when the city fills up, we do better.

[Blake Sartini, Chairman & CEO at Golden Entertainment]

But, Charles, do you

[Blake Sartini, Chairman & CEO at Golden Entertainment]

have Yeah.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

No. It just goes back, Chad, to the same visibility question. So anything that's coming if you look at things like EDC in May, like, is big for us given our location relative to where that is held. If those things, we're looking great. We just don't have that visibility to get past June.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

We may only we'll have less than, you know, maybe 10% on the books for the property as you get into July. So again, tougher for us to tell, but if you look in the near term and we're looking at May and we're looking at June, like I said, we're up six points in occupancy in May year over year. June looks strong for us as well on a relative basis to last year. So but we'll see. I mean, things are changing pretty quickly in the market.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

But for right now, our business feels very solid to improving as we head into Q2.

[Blake Sartini, Chairman & CEO at Golden Entertainment]

A couple of other quick data points, Chad, and this may not be a great segue. But at The Strat, we just signed a nationally recognized food and beverage concept that should open in The Strat sometime during the fourth quarter or first of next year, which is a positive given in the context of controlling our own destiny there. And we're beginning to receive rev share from Atomic Golf that continues to ramp next to us. We've begun receiving quarterly checks on our rev share, which is pretty significant this year. So the property in the context of what we can control, we feel very good about going forward.

[Chad Beynon, Managing Director, Analyst at Macquarie Group]

That's great. Thank you both. Appreciate it.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

Thanks, Chad.

[Operator]

And your next question comes from the line of Zachary Silverberg with Wells Fargo. Zachary, please go ahead.

[Zachary Silverberg, Vice President, Equity Research, Gaming & Leisure at Wells Fargo]

Hey, good evening. Thanks for taking my questions. And just one on the local segment, you guys saw some strong margins, 46% for the second straight quarter, increasing strength in April. Can you talk about the operational efficiencies there? And are there any other levers to pull moving forward where we could potentially see margins stable or potentially growing moving forward?

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

Yeah. I think it's from a locals perspective, we really did a great job rightsizing labor within those within those properties, particularly on the food and beverage outlets, streamlining streamlining menus, and getting some efficiencies in the hotel. Quite frankly, we've made some capital investments there. I'd say also we've experienced declining cost on the utility side that has been contributing to margins. So we feel pretty good about where that is.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

And look, the spend from our guests has remained strong. So our assets our local assets, we only have two local casinos, but they're fairly significant within the portfolio. And they have a very loyal local following that plays there frequently, we've seen, you know, very little very little impact from the macro conditions on that customer.

[Zachary Silverberg, Vice President, Equity Research, Gaming & Leisure at Wells Fargo]

Gotcha. And, you know, maybe back to capital allocation. How are you guys thinking about, you know, CapEx spend, maybe, either maintenance or potentially more growthy spend given the uncertain economic outlook and or a potential increase in input costs?

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

Yeah. I'd say for us, you know, we're pretty well insulated from any type of tariff exposure. You know, from a procurement perspective, if you look at linens and those types of things, we've already kind of sourced that away from from from Asia and into India and Pakistan in terms of that sourcing. So we don't have a lot of exposure from a tariff perspective. On the CapEx side of things, maintenance CapEx for the portfolio runs around 30,000,000 to $35,000,000 as it sits right now today.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

We do have two taverns that we intend to open this year. It is previously designed. And so we obviously intend to do that. We think they're in great locations. They'll be additive to the portfolio.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

And those are about $3,000,000 each. But beyond that, we have no major investments that are planned. And again, that goes back to we think the best capital allocation at this point is in buying our own stock.

[Blake Sartini, Chairman & CEO at Golden Entertainment]

Yeah. I would just add in terms of growth, I mentioned the nationally recognized food and beverage concept. We are negotiating a lot of third party investment in our facilities, which allows us for growth type amenities without using our capital as well as we have, as you know, a lot of excess real estate surrounding all of our casinos. And we continue to dial in on potential synergistic uses with third parties for those pieces for those parcels as well.

[Operator]

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Jordan Bender with Citizens GMP. Jordan, please go ahead.

[Jordan Bender, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Citizens]

Hey, Good afternoon. I know we're talking about some pretty short term impacts, but in recent weeks, have you seen the drive in traffic into Laughlin or Strat improve, you know, just given the gas prices have moved lower or or historically? Does that potentially point to a forward looking tailwind?

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

Yes. I think it does. I mean, what it does, it really helps discretionary spending, right? So it's offsetting some of those other inflationary pressures, particularly in the local market. It's a big driver when you see gas prices come down a little bit.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

You'd see a little bit of that spend in the taverns as well. From a Laughlin perspective, what's driving business there more is the events that we put on on the weekends. So us being able to have more frequent smaller events has been a more profitable exercise for us than having a lot of large scale concerts in Laughlin event center. So we're leading market share down there right now. It's viewed as a more cost effective entertainment destination than Vegas for a lot of people driving in for the Inland Empire.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

And so whether that tank of gas for them was $35 or $45 they're still going to come and see Jason Albin or Alabama or whatever is going on down there in the market at that time.

[Jordan Bender, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Citizens]

Great. And following up on the M and A discussion, it's been a few years of you guys just being a smaller sized company after the divestitures of Distributed Gaming in Maryland. Now that you've settled in and run that business, do you feel that if you continue as an independent company, you would look to add more scale back to the business?

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

I think it all depends. Right? It depends on value, quite frankly, in in either direction of the m and a discussion. So, you know, I think for us, we feel like we definitely have built a platform here over a long period of time that we could add assets to accretively, from an operational perspective. We just need to find assets in the right value zone that you could add accretively to do that.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

And like I said, we've done we've done a lot of work. We've talked a few quarters about looking at opportunities. And I think at this point in time, those are not out there that are attractive to us. So we are no longer looking at that. We are looking at buying our own stock and investing in the business as we move throughout this year.

[Jordan Bender, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Citizens]

Great. Thank you very much.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

Thanks.

[Operator]

And your next question comes from the line of John DeCree with CBRE. John, please go ahead.

[John Decree, Director - Equity Research at CBRE Group]

Hey, Charles, Blake. Maybe to ask the capital allocation question a little differently, given where your stock is, how cheap it is and your commitment to buying back stock and where the balance sheet is. Have you considered perhaps leaning into the repurchase a little bit more given your balance sheet capacity, I guess, I. E, use a little bit of leverage, that you probably use for M and A anyway, but given how attractive your stock is, so your thoughts on maybe being more aggressive there, a tender, something to that effect? And then a follow-up on the Strat operations.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

Yes. I mean, look, I think we will be aggressive in buying the stock. We use liquidity to do that. We obviously have a lot of capacity on a revolver. You could see there's, you know, over 200,000,000 of availability.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

I do think,

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

you know, tenders, and this is

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

anecdotal and a bit personal opinion. I have not seen those work so well within the gaming space. I think that, you know, you get a better sustained, not only support for the stock, but value for shareholders to extent that you were buying back the shares over time. Now those could be meaningful buybacks per quarter. I mean, you could see we bought back you know, if we look over last year, we're buying at the clip of a million shares a quarter, which, you know, would make us, you know, effectively, you know, largest shareholder of our own stock, right, as a company within those nine months.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

So I think that institutional,

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

of course, like, when I think that's common.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

But I think that, you know, that is that's how I see that rolling out. I would not expect immediacy of some tender. Now that said, that's given kind of where we're sitting right now. But there's some massive market dislocation. You know, our business remains quite stable.

[Charles Protell, President & CFO at Golden Entertainment]

And and again, in our mind, you know, the trends in our business are not reflective of our valuation and the recent gyrations in our stock. So, you know, if you know, I can't see how it happened, but if we're moving lower, maybe we change our tune on that.

[John Decree, Director - Equity Research at CBRE Group]

Fair enough. I appreciate that. I'd I'd agree with the valuation as well. And so, fundamentally, I wanted to ask about The Strat and your ability to yield up hotel room rate there. It's pretty good occupancy in the 1Q outside of February, which is a tough comp.

[John Decree, Director - Equity Research at CBRE Group]

And then I think you said up in April at attractive rates. And so when you look forward, what's the key to driving higher room rate at The Strat? Is that just getting occupancy back? Or do you need to price off of the Strip so continue to see your peers further south on the Strip Kind of what are your levers to pull to kind of get wound rate back up?

[Blake Sartini, Chairman & CEO at Golden Entertainment]

I think it's a combination of a couple of things. I think, obviously, we have to have some tailwinds from the city as the city as Charles mentioned, EDC and citywide promotions that we do tremendous with helps significantly. As I mentioned in my earlier comments, we are internally doing a much better job of being able to gather information from our guests that allow us a more direct line for direct bookings and things like that. So we see our OTA trends going down. That in two ways is going to increase revenue, one, potentially in rate two, certainly in casino revenue.

[Blake Sartini, Chairman & CEO at Golden Entertainment]

So that benefits the property, by the way. It really boils down to compression midweek. I mean, midweek is really where weekends, we are we're solid. We're great. We yield rate significantly effectively on the weekends.

[Blake Sartini, Chairman & CEO at Golden Entertainment]

But midweek, without a lot of citywide driven traffic, We, to your point, we take our lead off of kind of the South Strip guys and where they're going with their rate. And we with our newer casino, newer rooms, newer F and B, Atomic Golf, all the things we're building there service wise, I think we're surpassing a lot of our peers on the service floor side. The midweek is where we need we focus and we need a little help from the city on that side.

[John Decree, Director - Equity Research at CBRE Group]

Understood. Thanks Blake.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, as there are no further questions, that concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

Participants

Executives

• James Adams, VP - Corporate Finance & Treasurer
• Charles Protell, President & CFO
• Blake Sartini, Chairman & CEO

Analysts

• Barry Jonas, Managing Director at Truist Securities
• David Katz, Managing Director at Jefferies
• Chad Beynon, Managing Director, Analyst at Macquarie Group
• Zachary Silverberg, Vice President, Equity Research, Gaming & Leisure at Wells Fargo
• Jordan Bender, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Citizens
• John Decree, Director - Equity Research at CBRE Group